


the weight of living

by sparxwrites



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Leashes, Muzzles, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 16:57:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3985810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Settle down, Max,” she says – like she said fool, like most people say heel, with utter confindence that the words will be complied with. It’s not a request, and he settles, because she told him to. She has a way of making things simple, of narrowing the complicated branches of choice into a single line of obedience. It’s something he likes about her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the weight of living

**Author's Note:**

> how to tell a film was good: you cry loudly at your friends about how good tom hardy looks in a muzzle, and then stay up til midnight writing fic. idk what this is, it’s weird and disjointed and sort of rambling but?? i like it, so shrugs. no real spoilers for major plot points btw.
> 
> **tw** vague mental health issues, power dynamics, mentions of violence.

“Settle down, Max,” she says – like she said _fool_ , like most people say _heel_ , with utter confindence that the words will be complied with. It’s not a request, and he settles, because she told him to. She has a way of making things simple, of narrowing the complicated branches of choice into a single line of obedience. It’s something he likes about her.

The weight of her hand against the curve of his ribs is a single point of warmth and contact, enough to steady the jitters of his body. It doesn’t quiet his thoughts, though, the fractured spirals of distraction, calculation, animal instinct that he’s long since forgotten how to turn off, the accusing voices of faces without names that scream alongside his own.

As if reading his mind, she shifts, sighs, and presses her thumb a little more firmly between the raised lines of his ribs, hills and valleys that semi-regular food has not yet been able to erase. “ _Settle down_ ,” she repeats, the growl of the war rig in her words, iron in the press of her thumb, guzzoline-fueled fire in the way the order brands itself into his skin.

The silence, as his mind falls quiet and still, is the closest thing to peace he can remember. For once, the nightmares give him a solid hour’s sleep before they wake him sweating cold, trembling, blood in his mouth and on the sheets from teeth dug too far into his lip.

-

Furiosa doesn’t ask, and he never offers – she takes, instead, and sometimes he lets her. Sometimes he fights her, because there’s octane in his blood and anger carved into his bones and too many memories crammed into his head, because he forgets how to do anything else from time to time. She takes from him then, too, just the same.

It’s comforting in its consistency, given so little else is, so little else has been for as long as he can remember. The knowledge that she remains as an unchanging, uncompromising point of surety is a lodged stone of warmth somewhere under his lungs.

He wonders if, in the case of immovable objects, it is always the irresistible force that yields.

-

When she leashes him, he doesn’t fight – lets her muzzle him, like he was in the beginning of all this, metal bars over bared teeth and spikes close to his eyes. Chrome and rust, a permanent cage around his world, gleaming in the sun with every movement of his head.

It’s made bearable by the fact that it’s _her_ hand holding the chain, her fist the links wrap tight around, her arm that keeps it pulled taut. When he tugs and strains, she holds him still.

She’s a counterweight to his need to run, as she lets the chain dig into her fingers until it leaves white and red marks against the brown of her skin. When he exhausts himself with struggling, when his own obstinance has rubbed welts into his face and left his shoulders shaking, it’s _her_ palm that presses against his cheek until he quiets. Just for that, he thinks, there are many things he could bear.

-

It’s her will when she unclips the chain, unmuzzles him, gives him a car and a squad of warboys and points the growing dust cloud on the horizon with a, “Fetch.”

When he comes back, with blood and scars and a sack full of bullets, with promises of safety for the citadel in his limp and the curve of his back and the fresh bruises like stains across his skin, it’s her feet he kneels at. Kneels and stays, as she fits the muzzle back on, as she clips the chain to him, wraps it tight around her fist and pulls it taut.

He wonders if, finally, he’s found something heavy enough to pin him down.


End file.
